• 2021 has been the year where decentralised applications became mainstream for consumers with digital collectible (NFTs) and decentralised finance (DeFi)
• 25 million developers globally -- but more blockchain expertise needed
• New funding will enable Moralis to build the most robust and scalable platform for developers to build Web3 applications for the masses

 Moralis -- the next-generation blockchain development platform powering decentralised apps (dApps) -- is today announcing it has raised $13.4 million in seed funding, led by EQT Ventures. The funding will be used for hiring and continued product development -- enabling developers to build enterprise-scale blockchain applications rapidly, cutting cost and complexity. By providing a complete, end-to-end blockchain application development platform, Moralis uniquely allows developers and companies to focus on the front-end while handling the entire back-end. This saves time and money for projects that don’t have the resources or teams to build, manage, and maintain complex blockchain infrastructure. 

dApps exist and run on a blockchain, or peer-to-peer (P2P) network, of computers used for cryptocurrencies, NFT marketplaces, block explorers, decentralised investment platforms, crypto games, and more. Still, decentralised technology is in its infancy and requires time for the broader community to adopt, starting with developers. There are nearly 25 million developers in the world -- but only around 200,000 in Ethereum, the largest blockchain developers ecosystem. Recruiting talent is a universal hurdle for blockchain projects. Moralis allows blockchain projects to build faster and better, regardless of team size; adopting Moralis enables hiring from a larger talent pool. As Moralis’ plug-and-play tools are familiar to virtually all web developers, they can start programming and swiftly deploying blockchain dApps, even without blockchain expertise. 

Developers experience many obstacles inherent to blockchain technology when building dApps. User authentication, node management, real-time notifications, data indexing, and data aggregation are all challenging topics that different projects generally address in isolation -- making it hard for traditional web developers to jump into the Web3 world. This becomes harder when cross-chain (interoperability between two independent blockchains, allowing them to communicate with each other) and Layer-2 solutions are involved. As blockchain adoption has grown over the recent years, so has the number of projects and technologies needed to interact with blockchains, leading to a fragmented ecosystem. 

To address this, Moralis has been building a middleware platform that aggregates a long list of services ranging from node management, authentication to real-time and historic transaction indexing. By aggregating multiple services together into a single SDK, Moralis has the ambition to become the definitive gateway from Web2 to Web3 -- empowering the next generation of developers to build highly scalable and secure dApps in a matter of days, not months. By taking a chain-agnostic approach, Moralis future-proofs dApps, as developers can work with new blockchains seamlessly.

Moralis was founded in 2020 by Ivan Liljeqvist (CEO) and Filip Martinsson (COO). The product has been live since June this year (following a beta launched in H1 2021). Before building Moralis, Ivan and Filip were already active contributors to the democratisation of blockchain technology. Ivan has been running the Ivan on Tech YouTube channel with over 450,000 subscribers, teaching about the fundamentals of blockchain. Together with Filip, whom he met at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the two have been running the Ivan on Tech Blockchain Academy, which has trained more than 30,000 students with the skills needed to contribute to this fast-moving space -- making it the biggest online learning platform for blockchain in the world.  

Commenting on the news, Ivan Liljeqvist, CEO at Moralis, said: “We are overwhelmed by the positive feedback and excitement from the blockchain community; building dApps should be as easy as building websites and that’s the big vision of Moralis. We’ve already seen massive, sustained adoption in our first few months, amassing over 30,000 developers since launch -- and the growth shows no sign of slowing. This immense interest further validates Moralis’ business proposition, showcasing how we solve the pain points with existing blockchain development.”

Antoine Moyroud, Venture Lead at EQT Ventures, added: “In parallel to a busy year in the crypto space, with the rise of NFTs and DeFi applications, we have witnessed frustrations from traditional developers with the complexities involved in running blockchain projects. As the blockchain ecosystem matures, we are convinced that easy-to-use and scalable infrastructure tooling will be the key to unlocking the next wave of developers building decentralised applications. When meeting Ivan and Filip, we were fully aligned with their vision to democratise dApp building with best-in-class tools. It’s a privilege to support them on the next chapter of their journey -- time to build!”